“She’s coming here?” Nerves fluttered in Gabby’s stomach. She was relieved Charlotte was all right, but she wasn’t ready to see her.
Or anyone else.
“She’s sending someone to get you,” Lydia replied, with obvious disappointment that she would not see her niece.
Gabriella was to be picked up and delivered like a package—not a person. Until she’d met Lydia and the children at the orphanage, no one had ever treated Gabriella like a person. Pride stung, she shook her head and said, “That won’t be necessary.”
“You’re going to stay?” Lydia asked hopefully.
“I would love to,” she answered honestly. Here she was needed not for what she was but who she was. She loved teaching the children. “But I can’t …”
She had no idea who was coming for her, but she wasn’t going to wait around to find out. Given her luck, it would probably be Whit, and he was the very last person she wanted to see. Now. And maybe ever again.
Lydia nodded, but that disappointment was back on her face, tugging her lips into a slight frown. “I understand that you have a life you need to get back to …”
Her existence in St. Pierre had never been her life; it had never been her choice. But that was only part of the reason she didn’t plan on going back.
“But I would love to have you here,” Lydia said, her voice trembling slightly, “with me …”
They had only begun to get to know each other. If they had met sooner, Gabriella’s life would have been so different—so much better.
Tears burning her eyes, Gabriella moved across the small room to embrace the older woman. “Thank you …”
Lydia Green was the first person in her life who had ever been completely honest with her.
“Thank you,” she said, clutching Gabriella close. “You are amazing with the kids. They all love you so much.” She eased back and reached between them to touch Gabby’s protruding belly. “You’re going to make a wonderful mother.”
The baby fluttered inside Gabriella, as if in agreement or maybe argument with the older woman’s words. Was she going to make a wonderful mother? She hadn’t had an example of one to emulate. Her throat choked now with tears, she could barely murmur another, “Thank you …”
She didn’t want to leave, but she couldn’t stay. “Can I get a ride to the bus stop in town?”
She needed a Jeep to take her to a bus and the bus to take her to a plane. It wasn’t a fast trip to get anywhere in this country while the person coming for her would probably be using the royal jet and private ground transportation. She needed to move quickly.
“You really should wait for whoever Charlotte is sending for you,” Lydia gently insisted. “This is a dangerous country.”
Sadness clutched at her and she nodded. That was why they had so many orphans living in the dorms. The compound consisted of classroom huts and living quarters. If disease hadn’t taken their parents, violence had.
“I’ve been safe here,” she reminded Lydia.
“At the school,” the woman agreed, “because the people here respect and appreciate that we’re helping the children. But once you leave here …”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured her although she wasn’t entirely certain she believed that herself.
“You have a bodyguard for a reason. Because of who you are, you’re always in danger.” Lydia was too busy and the country too remote for her to be up on current affairs, so Charlotte must have told her all about Gabby’s life.
Gabriella glanced down at her swollen belly. Her bare feet peeped out beneath it, her toes stained with dirt from the floor. “No one will recognize me.”
Not if they saw her now. She bore only a faint resemblance to the pampered princess who’d walked runways and red carpets.
But she wasn’t only physically different.
She didn’t need anyone to protect her anymore—especially since she really couldn’t trust anyone but herself. She had to protect her life and the life she was carrying inside her.
A WALL OF HEAT hit Whit when he stepped from the airport. Calling the cement block building with the metal roof an airport seemed a gross exaggeration, though. He stood on the dirt road outside, choking on the dust and the exhaust fumes from the passing vehicles. Cars. Jeeps. Motorbikes. A bus pulled up near the building, and people disembarked.
A pregnant woman caught his attention. She wore a floppy straw hat and big sunglasses, looking more Hollywood than third world. But her jeans were dirt-stained as was the worn blouse she wore with the buttons stretched taut over her swollen belly.
It couldn’t be Gabby.
Hell, she was pregnant; it couldn’t be Gabby …
His cell vibrated in his pocket, drawing his attention from the woman. He grabbed it up with a gruff, “Howell here.”
“Are you there?” Charlotte Green asked, her voice cracking with anxiety. “Have you found her yet?”
“The plane just landed,” he replied.
He had only glanced at his phone when he’d turned it back on, but he suspected all the calls he’d missed and the voice mails he had yet to retrieve had been from the princess’s very worried bodyguard.
“But Whit—”
“Give me a few minutes,” he told her. “You’re not even sure she’s still here.”
Wherever the hell here was; from his years as a U.S. Marine, he was well traveled but Whit had never even heard of this country before. Calling it a country was like calling that primitive building an airport—a gross exaggeration.
“I finally reached my aunt Lydia this morning,” Charlotte said. “She confirmed that Gabby is still at the orphanage.”
He exhaled a breath of relief. She was alive. And not lost. “That’s good.”
Nobody had kidnapped the princess as they had her bodyguard. Gabby was right where Charlotte had sent her six months ago. Why hadn’t she answered the woman’s previous calls then?
“She’s all right?”
“No.” Static crackled in the line, distorting whatever else Charlotte might have said.
He stopped walking, so that he didn’t lose the call entirely. Reception was probably best closest to the airport, so he took a few steps back into the throng of people.
“What’s wrong?” Whit asked, the anxiety all his now. “Has she been hurt?”
“Yeah …”
And he realized it wasn’t static in the line but Charlotte Green’s voice
